Seeing Stars
by Faye Dartmouth
Summary: Dean asks if he believes in angels and God and Lucifer, and Sam has to pause, because his head hurts, his conscience aches, and all he sees are stars. Spoilers for 4.02.


Title: Seeing Stars

Summary: Dean asks if he believes in angels and God and Lucifer, and Sam has to pause, because his head hurts, his conscience aches, and all he sees are stars.

A/N: I'm not sure I totally like this fic or that it totally works but Sam's POV just needs to be written so I'm doing what I have to do until (hopefully) the show (maybe) does it for us (finally). Yeah, I may still be a little bitter :) Thanks and love to geminigrl11 and sendintheclowns for their help both in beta'ing and listening to me rant. And I have ranted a lot.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

-o-

Sam's seeing stars.

It's cold and there's a ghost he recognizes and it's all his fault.

His face meets the sink and for a second, that's all there is.

Just a dirty gas station sink and his brother's back in the car, sound asleep. Dean's asleep, which means Dean's alive, when only a week ago he was dead. He was dead and now he's alive and there's this whole angel thing going on and even with all of that, they're trying to make it seem like everything is _normal_. But Sam's driving the Impala and Dean's alive and Henrikson's a ghost and yeah, that's a really hard sink.

Sam's seeing stars and it's all his fault.

-o-

He's kind of amazed Dean tells him about the angel.

He's not so surprised that Dean doesn't think it really is an angel. He's also not surprised that Dean believes he wasn't worth it. That's sort of a side-effect, Sam figures, of being a Winchester son. When your dad is sitting there telling you to fall in line, telling you to save people, telling you to give up everything else in life for one single goal of revenge, telling you that you might have to kill your brother, it's kind of easy to forget that you're a person.

He is kind of surprised that _he's_ so willing to believe it. After all, a week ago, he would have told God to take a flying leap. Because God let everyone die. God took Mom and Dad and Jess and his life and everything and Sam had been able to overlook that, almost able to let all of that go, because there was still Dean.

But when God let Dean die, let him go to _Hell_, Sam stopped believing in anything. He stopped believing in God, in angels, in goodness, in truth, in promises, in his own damn self, not that that last part had bee all that difficult.

A week ago, Dean was dead and Sam didn't believe in anything. But now Dean's alive (living, breathing, snarking, alive) and Sam knows he's not the one responsible. He knows it wasn't Lilith, either, that it wasn't a demon, it wasn't anything he had any knowledge of, and so there weren't really any other options. Dean's worth saving, Sam's always thought so, and since he's tried everything else, he figures God's the only option left.

Because Dean walked into Sam's motel room, breathing and all, and Sam's still seeing stars, and he's pretty sure that that's God's fault, and he's pretty okay with that.

-o-

He told Dean once that it came out of him like a punch.

He wasn't lying about that. He's lied about a lot of things and will lie about a lot more, but he wasn't lying about that.

A punch, indeed.

The first time, it was to protect Dean.

The second time, it was to get Dean back.

Because that demon just had to know something, it had to, and Sam was tired of taking no for an answer. Exorcisms couldn't scare the truth out of them and beating the host to death was really just not the way to go and he needed Dean so bad that it hurt like a bullet to the gut.

So when the demon is screaming and the host is writhing and there's black smoke, Sam sort of blanks, sort of blinks out, because that's just not supposed to happen.

Ava was right. Jake was right. Sure, they turned out kind of homicidal in the end, but that didn't mean they couldn't be right. About that switch in their heads, about how once it gets turned on, there's just no holding it back.

Sam killed a demon with his freakin' mind and even if his nose doesn't bleed any more, he's still seeing stars. He's seeing stars, but the guilt doesn't bother him like it used to.

-o-

No matter what happens, Sam still wants to save people. He's kind of flexible these days on what that means, whether or not collateral damage is okay, whether or not Machiavelli was right about that whole ends and means thing.

Sam wants to save people and Sam wants to save Bobby because Bobby says that family doesn't end with blood and Sam really wants to believe that. But Dean does and Dean's alive so that's enough for now.

It's sort of easy to be a hunter, to be in charge, to move in with gun and ammo and do what needs to be done. Simple and easy. Clear-cut.

The rest of his life isn't quite so defined.

Because Dean was dead and Sam was alive for four months. Sam was alive and had to live every excruciating moment. He had to live with that failure, with that memory of Dean being shredded along with all of Sam's promises. He had to live in a world where everything just screamed of _Dean_ and yet there was no Dean.

He thought he could forget. He thought by leaving Bobby behind, by cutting all ties, by putting in the iPod, that he could change it. That he could become so far removed from who he was, from who Dean was, that he could become something different. Not better, but different. Never better. Just enough different to survive.

Which is why hunting. Why the powers. Why all of it. Because it was his to control, there was evil and good and he could kill the evil and thereby uphold the good. Basic logic. See, Machiavelli was right, he _was_.

But Dean's back and _alive_ and he has to save Bobby just like he sort of needs to save himself. He knows how to kill a ghost, but maybe not these ghosts, and he finds Bobby just to find himself flying the air.

He hits something hard, something that shatters, and it's another thing he didn't see coming, another thing he should have seen, should have prevented because Bobby needs him but for now all Sam's just seeing stars.

-o-

He doesn't let himself think about it until Meg calls him on it.

Meg's a ghost, a vengeful ghost who clearly has an axe to grind, but she's right.

Ruby's a demon. Ruby's not even her name. Ruby's some blonde girl whose body was found in a house in Indiana. He still calls her Ruby, even when she was the short red-head in Atlanta, even when she was that Chinese-American girl in Houston. The current Ruby is a brunette, kind of pretty, and on some level he's hoping that this one would be around for awhile. The consistency is nice. She's not a friend but she's the only familiar thing he'll let close.

He didn't ask where the various hosts came from. He didn't ask where they went. He didn't ask if they were good girls or bad girls or coma patients or dead. He didn't ask anything.

And he's pretty sure that makes him a bad person, a really bad person, and for a second, that scares the crap out of him. Because he's never been sure if any of this is right, but he's never known what else to do. Because Dean was dead and Sam was alone and he had these powers and he was alone and empty and scared and hurt.

And Sam's seeing stars, but it doesn't make it right, but he doesn't know what else to do, and Sam raises his shotgun and blows Meg away.

-o-

His back hurts from sleeping on the couch. He's too big for it, has been since he was fifteen, but that's always where he slept. Dean used to take the cot in the spare room because that was always his big brother prerogative, but this morning Dean's camped out on the floor and Sam's really not sure why.

Sam's not sure about a lot of things, like his powers, like Ruby, like lying to Dean, like staying with Bobby. Because he's playing with fire and the ethics are a little sketchy and Dean's his brother and Bobby doesn't quite trust him.

Worse, Dean's asking him about God and Lucifer and all of that stuff and there's something big happening. Something with the apocalypse, something with angels and demons, and for a second Sam worries.

Worries that this God he knows saved Dean might not save him. Worries that this is the story of Jacob and Esau and even if Dean is the older brother, that maybe he's the favored son. Because God has mercy on who he has mercy on, and Dean's pretty deserving of that even if he doesn't know it.

Problem is, Sam's not. Sam's the liar, Sam's the failure, Sam's the one with demonic powers. Sam's the one consorting with the enemy.

That was okay when Dean didn't believe in anything but family.

But if Dean believes, if Dean really does trust in angels or God or some Greater Purpose, then maybe he'll see Sam for what he is. For what he's always been.

Dean asks if he believes in angels and God and Lucifer, and Sam has to pause, because his head hurts, his conscience aches, and all he sees are stars.


End file.
